A huge amount of money and brains is invested in creating genius movie characters such as detectives and secret agents. Yet, these supposedly “clever” heroes and villains turned out to have lesser common sense than ordinary people like us who are neither double agent nor have a team of scriptwriters. We get so mesmerized by their majestic plans that we tend to turn a blind eye to their lack of ingenuity. Someone with no presence of mind would have been more acceptable had he/she were not portrayed as the smartest one in the room. Here are the 12 stupidest characters in movies who were supposed to be smart.
1. General Ross in The Incredible Hulk
No matter how many villains come and go in the MCU, including robots and extra-terrestrial entities, the biggest j*erk is General Ross. The only purpose of his existence is to be the fishbone stuck in the Avengers’ throat. He tries to admonish and reprimand the heroes for damaging properties and putting others’ lives in danger during the battles. It was unexpected of a man who fears collateral damage to take on Hulk in the middle of a college campus.
2. Pietro Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron
Pietro aka Quicksilver of MCU needs to be trained by Fox’s Quicksilver or CW’s Flash. The poor hero sacrificed himself unnecessarily by taking hits from several bullets while protecting Hawkeye and a kid. The whole point of Speedsters is to run faster than the bullet and either remove the target from their position or catch the bullet.
3. Yashida in The Wolverine
Wolverine’s old friend, Yashida went through a tedious plan to get hold of Wolverine’s healing powers. He faked his own death, staged a grand funeral, put his granddaughter’s life in danger, and orchestrated the whole journey to trick Logan to enter his trap. He devised such a long plan when he could have simply stolen the healing factor from Wolverine at the mansion when he was drugged and unconscious.
4. Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity
Jason Bourne spent ages developing a plan to kill Wombosi who shot him off a boat. You would expect an intelligent man like Bourne to keep a watch on his target and do a thorough study on his background before executing his plan. But, no! Apparently, Bourne didn’t know about Wombosi’s family and decided not to kill him when he saw him with his kids.
5. Django in Django Unchained
Django and Dr. Schultz came up with a dramatic plan in a typical Schultz style to rescue the former’s wife. Instead of simply buying her from Candle, they decided to purchase his most expensive fighter and casually ask him to add the woman for free.
6. Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man
In ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’, Peter put a label on his camera that read “Property of Peter Parker”. It’s a great idea when you want to protect your valuables from getting lost. But he uses the same camera to secretly get a picture of The Lizard. What if the camera went to the wrong hands? Was he expecting them to track down Peter Parker and hand him over the camera like a true Samaritan?
7. Bill Paxton in Terminator
What would you do if you saw a naked hunk charging at you in the middle of the night? Run for the hills? But to the stupid Bill Paxton, a nude robot advancing towards him was hilarious and not funny. In his defense, he didn’t know it was a robot. That makes it less scary.
8. James Bond in Skyfall
In Skyfall, Bond attempts to trick the big bad Silva into believing that Bond and M are in the estate without any backup or weapons. Silva does fall for the trick which was not really a trick in a technical sense. Bond didn’t bother to get a backup and took M with him to the estate without any defenses. As a result, Silva was easily able to kill M.
9. T-1000 in Terminator 2
The evil T-1000 had the ability to impersonate someone else’s voice. But instead of using its powers, it stabbed Sarah Conner and asked her to call out John’s name. What was the whole point of getting a bot if it couldn’t remember its powers, let alone using them?
10. Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry was not willing to participate in the Goblet of Fire. He always complained of his cursed life and how didn’t he ask for all the dangers and the attention that followed. Then why didn’t he just refuse to take part in the tournament? Yes, it was a binding magical contract, breaking what may have been fatal like breaking the Unbreakable Vow. But that binding contract couldn’t apply to Harry as he wasn’t the one to put his name in the fire.
11. Gothel in Tangled
The entire argument between Rapunzel and Gothel in “Tangled” was based on the lanterns that were lit only on her birthday every year. The kingdom began lighting the lanterns in the name of the princess ever since she went missing. Gothel was very much aware of the idea behind this ritual because she was the one who kidnapped the princess. Then why did she tell Rapunzel that it was her birthday that day? Watching lanterns go up on her birthday was exactly what made Rapunzel curious.
12. Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
The genius Davy Jones decides to take his heart out and put it in a Dead Man’s Chest so he never feels love again. Now all he needs to do is hide the chest in a place that is easily accessible to everyone but himself. So he buries it in an island that he may not get to visit in a decade. So anyone could find his heart and get control over him.
